Jason Sudeikis and Jeremy Irons have joined the Jesse Owens biopic Race.
Deadline reported that production on the film would start in a month. Focus Features just acquired the domestic distribution rights to the film.
Stephen Hopkins is directing from a script by Anna Waterhouse and Joe Shrapnel. Stephan Jones stars as the renowned Olympian. Sudeikis will play Owens’ obsessive coach Larry Snyder, who coached Olympic athletes to 14 world records and eight gold medals. Irons, on the other hand, will play American Olympic committee head Avery Brundage, who wanted to have the 1936 Olympics take place in Berlin. According to Cinema Blend Brundage later managed to keep Owens from participating in the 1940 games based on a technicality, so it looks like Irons will be playing the villain of the picture.
This is not the only film about Jesse Owens in the works right now. Disney is working on adapting Jeremy Schaap’s Triumph into a film, Anthony Mackie is proposed as the star in another film and writer-director Greg Nava is working on yet another version.
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